Ocholi’s Death: FRSC Investigation Says Driver Over Sped

A Road Traffic Crash Investigation by the Federal Road Safety Corps  (FRSC) has blamed Taiwo James Elegede, the driver of the Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV) which conveyed the late Labour Minister, State, James Ocholi and members of his family last Sunday, for over speeding.

Elegede had no valid drivers lincence, the FRSC investigation also revealed.

Late Ocholi alongside his wife and son, were on Sunday killed in an auto crash along the Kaduna-Abuja expressway.

The report of the investigation which was carried out by Federal Roads Safety Corps Investigation Team, was read by Corps Marshal, Boboye Oyeyemi during a valedictory session of the Federal Executive Council in honour of the late Ocholi at the Council Chambers of the Presidential Villa, Abuja, Wednesday.

Information from the investigations revealed that there were two cars, the minister’s car and the back up car. They were 10 persons involved in the accident and 9 were adults. The minister and his son, died on the spot while his wife died at the hospital. The driver of the crashed vehicle was moving at excess of the stipulated speed when he had a tyre burst. The investigation team gathered that the driver of the backup vehicle had noticed that the minister’s vehicle rear left tyre was under inflated, and availability of radio communication deprived him of access to the minister’s driver, Oyeyemi said.

According to Oyeyemi, further checks had shown that the driver’s details , were not registered on the FRSC data base as a licensed driver. “There was no record on the driver’s licence national data base of the driver of the Hon. Minister with the name Taiwo James Elegbede” he said reading from the report.

The Corp Marshal further explained that apart from the driver’s high speed, the non usage of seat belts by the deceased minister and his family members had increased their chances of being killed as a result of the crash. He added that by theory the occupants of the front seats received less injuries because they made use of their seat belt.

The dunlop tyres of the SUV were not expired but were wrongly fixed and could have affected its performance. The situation would have been salvaged if there had been a mode of communication between the minister’s car and the back up car, as the later had noticed the state of the tyres and tried to stop them.

“The crashed vehicle driver was driving too fast and he slammed on his brake so hard. These two factors materially contributed to the inability of the driver to maintain control when the left rear tyre burst.

“Skid marks and grooves found on the westbound shoulder made by the Lexus LX570 for about 15m and 9.3m respectively before it began somersaulting severely and the ejection of the minister and his son showed clearly that the travelling speed of the Lexus LX570 presented unsafe consequences in the event of certain road risk that may have occurred.

“The driver must have entered into a panic situation which resulted to his hard application of brakes and subsequent loss of control that took him into the bush part.

“The DOT number of the tyres were inward which cannot easily be read from outside. This indicate that the orientations of the tyres were not properly fixed which could adversely affect the performance of the tyres.

“The Federal Road Safety Corps Investigation Team (FIT) determines that the probable cause of the March 6, 2016 fatal crash at KM34 Kaduna -Abuja expressway near Rijana village Kaduna state was the driver’s failure to maintain directional control of his vehicle when the rear left tyre burst occurred.

“Severity of the fatality was increased due to the ejection of the minister and his son as a result of non use of rear seat belt” Oyeyemi said.

The corps recommended among other things “the certification and re-certification of convoy drivers at intervals of 2years of issuance of convoy driver’s licence”.
The report, in its concluding paragraph called for adherence to traffic rules, repairs of bad spots on highways and also urged President Buhari to lead the campaign on compliance with speed limits, starting with installation of speed limiting devises in commercial vehicles.